


Damn, Sollux, Do You Even Understand the Word 'Subtle'?

by Newtavore



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caretaking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Helmsman Mentions, M/M, Mituna Being Ridiculous, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Poor Psiioniic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you lay awake and think on how utterly absurd it is, for you to be the voice of reason, of sorts. The metaphorical 'oldest'. You watch out for them, you make sure shit doesn't happen to them, you take care of them, and it only exacerbates your feelings for them because, to be honest, they're dependent on you. </p><p>You are the babysitter. It is you. </p><p>How the fuck you became the responsible one, you'll never know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damn, Sollux, Do You Even Understand the Word 'Subtle'?

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry

Psiioniic is weird.

 

Granted, you weren't expecting much from the troll who'd helped create  _you_ \- you are pretty much the epitome of abnormal, after all- but you don't think you were quite expecting this. 

 

This being a troll who doesn't seem to move, sleep, eat, or do anything but sit in his uncomfortable kitchen chair in the corner and stare at the wall, shuddering every so often. 

 

You know he went through a lot. You know he was a Helmsman, a living  _battery_ , and from the little research you've done you think it's perfectly understandable, that he's traumatized, that he's scared, but… He doesn't even seem all there, like half his brain's missing, like he's just a shell floating around in an unfamiliar world he doesn't know how to interact with. 

 

He sits strangely, limbs splayed like he doesn't know what to do with them, and with a shot of horror you realize he might not. Thousands of sweeps hooked into the navigation system, attached to the very ship itself… You know a little bit about how the Helmsman program works. You know what they do to psionics like you, like him… and he was the  _Condesce's_  ship. 

 

He was  _the ship_. Of course he acts like he's missing something, like he's not all there- to him, he isn't. He spent so long as a part of something bigger, as a part of some massive collective with his physical body just an afterthought, that maybe he _doesn't_  remember how to interact on a three-dimensional plane. 

 

It takes you three rotations of the asteroid's time cycle to come to this revelation, three 'days' in which you did not see him move a single inch. Maybe he hadn't. He hasn't needed to the past million sweeps, after all, why would the thought occur to him now? 

 

The Endgame had brought you all back whole, but you can't undo sweeps and sweeps of memory, of programming, with a few lines of code. You and Mituna both seem to realize this- you notice your dancestor become uncharacteristically quiet, almost soft spoken, when sharing a room with your ancestor. Mituna is repaired, mentally, but you don't think anyone ever realized how much of his actions were caused by brain damage and how much were caused by his hideous personality, so these moments of quiet are unusual.

 

But around the Psiioniic, he is gentle. He does his best not to startle the troll, or cause him harm in any way, and you find yourself adopting the same attitude. 

 

You start cooking for two, and prompting him to eat, to drink. He does so slowly, mechanically, using his psionics rather than his limbs, but you notice him become more alert, a little more coherent. You start spending more time in the small living area you share with the two other Captors, reading out loud or murmuring to yourself as you code, just so he won't be alone. He doesn't seem to acknowledge the attention, but you notice him creeping closer, just an inch or two a waking cycle, maybe. 

 

He moves just as awkwardly as he sits, using psionics to scoot himself forward, rather than his atrophied limbs. You aren't sure he knows how to use them, to be honest. 

 

"You're free, you know," you say, one waking cycle, addressing him directly, and he cringes away from you in a way that makes your stomach clench, "You don't have anything to be afraid of. You aren't going back."

 

He doesn't respond. You don't know if he remembers how to speak. But he does move to the couch, the next sleeping cycle you spend awake, sitting as far as possible from you yet still within reach. 

 

"You aren't going back to a ship," you lisp, every rotation, and you think that maybe he starts believing you, "You're never going back to a ship."

 

Mituna starts talking to him too, in low, murmured tones you can't hear, and can't be bothered to eavesdrop. He talks to the Psiioniic much more than you do, sometimes spending all waking cycle kneeled in front of his new haunt on the couch, speaking softly. Whatever he says, it pries your ancestor from his shell bit by bit, until, one rotation, he starts talking back. 

 

His voice is hoarse, cracking every few words and full of stumbling and mispronounced words, but he speaks. He tells you he doesn't remember his name. He tells you that he feels blind, crippled without the data from the ship. He tells you that he's scared, and that he doesn't know how things work anymore, he doesn't know how to fix it, he doesn't know the proper repair procedures but his lack of connection is registering as a glitch and he can't  _fix it_. 

 

He whispers, quiet and fearful, that he's not sure he _wants_ to fix it. 

 

You tell him he never has to, and he cries. You and Mituna hold him, shoosh him, and he shivers through sweeps of pent up emotions in your arms, until he's nothing but a tearstained wreck and you have a new definition for the word 'pitiful'.

 

After that, he comes to life. He eats more often, moves around the small apartment-style living space you share, and, on one memorable occasion, tries to learn to walk. 

 

You are right in suspecting that he doesn't actually know how to use his limbs anymore. 

 

That line of action is quickly halted until you get a set of crutches from Equius, sturdy steel braces tailored to his short, thin stature. Because, you notice as he stands up for the first time in your memory, he's shorter than you, smaller than Mituna even, and you wonder, sick to your stomach, how young he was when he was grafted to the ship. Grafting to the organic biotransport stunts the growth process, and for him to be so small…

 

You teach him how to use the braces, and he follows you around like a lost puppy, stumbling his way from room to room. He doesn't like being alone; he's told you that it makes everything less real, makes him doubt whether this is actually happening, so you don't put up a fuss, and neither does Mituna. 

 

You admit, you do cater to him, the both of you do, but in your eyes, he deserves it. He went through so much shit, it's only fair that now you both treat him like something precious, something to protect. Because he is, he really is, and he seems to soak up the attention as much as possible with no complaints so you don't think he minds too much. 

 

It takes a while, but slowly, he gets used to his own body, and you get used to his quirks. 

 

He hates silence, so you start playing music or leaving the TV on at all times, just to provide him with background noise. You get used to him following you around, get used to him stumbling everywhere in with a sort of fatalistic, fierce determination, like he believes he'll either learn to walk or die trying. You get used to his strange sleeping patterns, his fear of the dark, his fear of water. You get used to all this and more, and, before you know it, three weeks have passed since the Endgame and someone is pounding on your door, sending him into a sort of panicked flail that has you scooping him up with your own powers before he falls of the couch. 

 

"Easy," you say, and set him down. 

 

Karkat is at the door, demanding to know if you've all killed each other because no one has seen neither hide nor hair of any Captor since you'd all fought it out for living spaces. 

 

You're still alive, you tell him, just busy. Between teaching Mituna how to use his powers again and watching Psiioniic, you'd hardly even realized how much time has passed.

 

You start leaving your rooms more often though, reconnecting with people you didn't even realize you hadn't seen, and Psiioniic, though scared and trembling, follows you. It's good for him, to leave the apartment-style living space, but you wish he didn't have to look so miserable about it because it made you feel guilty even though it was his fault for following you in the first place. 

 

He stays close, half-hiding behind your own lanky frame and ducking behind things whenever any of the other Ancestors wander into whatever room you happen to be in, but you watch as he slowly, really slowly, grows more confident. He doesn't flinch when there's an unexpected noise, anymore, and once or twice he even ventures out of your rooms without either you or Mituna. 

 

You're proud of him, you realize. 

 

Silly considering he was your Ancestor, an older, more powerful version of you, but you are. You're proud of him when he begins talking to other people, you're proud of him when he starts smiling, starts laughing, you're proud of him when he visibly starts putting his time in the ship behind him. You are so fucking proud it almost hurts. 

 

He starts initiating contact, and stops cringing away from your touch, your hands. He's more confident, more self-assured, more receptive. He sits closer to you on the couch, then closer, and closer, until he's practically in you lap, a warm presence against your side as you work on code and blow up computers. 

 

Mituna joins you more often than not, flopping over the both of you, but you just shrug and use his back as a computer stand. You'd never been much for contact, but it's just… different, with them. You don't feel the need to mask your reactions or hold onto a front with them, maybe it's because they are you, or like you, or something, you don't really know. To be honest, you don't really care. 

 

You're comfortable with them in a way you don't think you ever were with anyone else. 

 

The revelation comes to you in the middle of what's supposed to be a sleep cycle, when you're wide awake and unable to rest because Psiioniic is curled in your coon right beside you, because he doesn't have one of his own and like hell are you going to let him sleep fitfully on the couch any longer. 

 

You've never felt more at ease with anyone else, never felt more yourself. 

 

After that, you spend more time watching them, looking at them, analyzing your own reactions to them, and, the more you did, the more you were struck with some rather unexpected realizations.

 

You really, honestly care for them. 

 

You  _like_  it when Psiioniic curls up against you, you  _like_  it when Mituna uses you as a pillow, you  _like_  it when you all crash in the living room and watch movies together, you  _like_  it when you're with them, spending time with them. You just like  _them_. 

 

You like sharing a coon with Psii and on occasion also Mituna (though not often because two people was pushing it, three people was uncomfortably cramped). You like it when Psii smiles, when Mituna laughs, when they both fall asleep together and you can just watch them, or when they both fall asleep on you and you can feel like less of a creep and more of an active participant. 

 

The more the rotations drag on, the more you catch yourself doing things you probably shouldn't. You're touching them more often, casually, hands on their shoulders, on their backs, ruffling their hair. You're watching them, too, all the time, and if you weren't being creepy before you definitely are now. 

 

The fact that you're flushed for your broken ancestor and crazy dancestor isn't really a surprise. You figured your life would fuck you over like this eventually. So you just… deal with it. You push it to the side and focus on other things, like coding, helping Mituna with his ever-increasing psionics, and making sure Psiioniic is eating enough, sleeping enough. You distract yourself from them,  _with_  them, which seems stupid and counterproductive until one realizes that just one of them is a handful, not to mention two of them. 

 

After nearly two months, you're still stuck on an asteroid rocketing towards an unknown planet, but Psiioniic was moving under his own power. He still uses the braces, but you think it's more because they're familiar than because he actually needs them. Mituna is increasing in skill with leaps and bounds, now able to move things a bit larger and heavier than you, which wasn't saying much but it was still an improvement because it meant he could stop using 'practice' as an excuse to throw you around. 

 

Sometimes, you lay awake and think on how utterly _absurd_ it is, for you to be the voice of reason, of sorts. The metaphorical 'oldest'. You watch out for them, you make sure shit doesn't happen to them, you take care of them, and it only exacerbates your feelings for them because, to be honest, they're dependent on you. 

 

You are the babysitter. It is you. 

 

How the fuck you became the _responsible_ one, you'll never know, but the job doesn't bother you all that much. It gives you a reason to be closer to them, an excuse to be protective and possessive because they're yours to look out for,  _yours_ , and you won't stand any harm coming to either of them. 

 

You'd only had to make that point clear once, when an irate Meenah had gotten in Psiioniic's face for something or other, you weren't assed enough to pay attention. Either way, she'd upset him, sent him cowering into a corner and you'd flipped the fuck out, because he was scared and trembling and she'd undone _weeks_ of hard work, and nobody got to fuck with what was yours,  _nobody_. 

 

And nobody had, since. You think you might have actually scared everyone off bothering the both of them, forever. 

 

Which is why you aren't sure what has Psiioniic upset, because he is, or at least nervous about something, sitting further away from you than normal and fidgeting with the sleeves of one of your shirts. It hangs off him like a sail, but he found them more comfortable than his own clothes, so you never complain about him filching them. 

 

Mituna was grinning, sitting on your other side, bumping your shoulder every so often as he did something or other with one of the RPG's the humans had loaned him. 

 

"Sollux?"

 

You turn back to Psiioniic. The braces are on the floor at his feet, but he doesn't need them to scoot himself closer to you, until he's practically in your lap, one hundred and three pounds of shaking, twitchy troll. You settle a hand on his back, remembering how fucking proud you'd been when he'd broken three digits, because it meant he wasn't so dangerously, terrifyingly unhealthy anymore.

 

You're prepared to kill whatever has him so distressed. 

 

"Yeah?" you say, and then there's a blur, a hand on your cheek and something warm pressed against your lips, and for a moment you have no clue what's going on. You're blindsided, because, did Psiioniic just- did he just- ?

 

He pulls away, an apology tumbling from his mouth, but you dart forward and capture his lips with your own again because damn, even if this is a dream he  _kissed you_ , he  _is_  kissing you. You bury your hands in his hair, brushing against the rough, unpolished surface of his horns, and he frames your face with his, trembling. 

 

You're pulled away by a hand wrapped around your own horn, and you're about to snarl at whoever has the audacity to wrench you from something you've been craving for much too long, until you're yanked into another kiss, wild and much more experienced. 

 

You're released, and you focus dazed eyes on a madly grinning Mituna. 

 

"Don't think we haven't noticed you staring," he lisps, and pushes you back to Psiioniic, who kisses you on the cheek, "Could you'a been any more obvious? Geez, you're such a creeper, SX."

 

Psiioniic smiles, then, face flushed, and nods in agreement. 

 

"You were not subtle in your admirations," he says, voice soft, "It took me a while to notice, however."

 

You're reeling. You did not think you'd been obvious in the slightest, but fuck if you knew how to hide a flush crush from someone, you'd never really had much of one before. Maybe you had been. 

 

The part that was really overheating your servers was the part where they noticed and actually _reciprocated_. 

 

Never in your wildest dreams did you ever think you'd have even one of them, much less both of them, but here you are, getting kissed within an inch of your life by two trolls you felt such heartbreaking pity for you wanted to hide them in your room and never let them leave. 

 

"But we did, and, well…"

 

"What he's trying to say," Mituna butts in, licking his lips, "Is that yes, dancestor mine, we'd love to ride your bulges."

 

He does this- this thing, the most ridiculous eveybrow wiggle you've ever seen and he had to have learned it from the humans because it- 

 

You can't control the sniggers falling from your lips, both at- at whatever the fuck he just did with his tongue and the look of sheer, unadulterated embarrassment on Psiioniic's face, which was burning with heat and flushed the brightest yellow you've ever seen. 

 

"M-mituna-" he stutters, and you wonder if he'd ever had a chance to fill a pail with anyone. 

 

You don't like that thought or the feeling it churns up in your gut so you take his blushing face in your hands and kiss him again, ignoring the obnoxious whooping coming from the other side of the couch. 

 

"Not now, but maybe later," you say, and laugh again when he pushes you away, slapping his hands over his face. 

 

Still, he falls against your chest and sighs, and Mituna curls up into your other side, slipping both you and him another kiss. They're both purring, and, after a shocked moment, you realize that unfamiliar vibration in your chest is a purr, too. 

 

You grin and sink back into the couch, rumbling along with them and reveling in the feeling of untarnished happiness. You are happy, happy without the overhang of constant worry and doom you're used to dealing with, and it's because of the two disgustingly beautiful creatures curled up on top of you. 

 

You press a kiss to their horns and close your eyes, deciding to finish up the rest of your program later. You couldn't think of a better thing to do with your time than waste a waking cycle napping with your new matesprits.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a train wreck and it will probe be extensively edited when i can actually focus on something without twitting myself off the chair


End file.
